The Late George Apley

United States

1947

93 Min

Black and White

1.37:1

English

Currently 3.0/5 Stars.
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SCR Philip Dunne, George S. Kaufman, John P. Marquand

CAST Ronald Colman, Vanessa Brown, Richard Haydn, Charles Russell, Richard Ney, Percy Waram, Mildred Natwick, Edna Best, Nydia Westman, Peggy Cummins

PROD DES James Basevi, J. Russell Spencer

It’s 1912 Boston. The Apley family, led by its patriarch George, is built on a foundation of the strong traditions of being Bostonians. Anyone who is anyone in Boston knows who the Apleys are, or at least that’s what the Apleys would like to believe. George aspires to the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who he sees as espousing the strong traditions upon which he lives. George and his wife Catherine’s life, and by extension that of George’s extended family, is turned upside down when their two children go against the traditions of the family. Daughter Eleanor has fallen in love with Howard Boulder, who is not only not originally from Boston but is not a Harvard man. And the family believes that son John is courting his cousin, Agnes Willing, as he should be. Agnes also believes this to be the case. But that belief is false as John has fallen in love with someone outside his circle, namely Myrtle Dole, who is not only the daughter of a mechanic, but is – aghast to George – a foreigner: she lives in Worcester. George tries to convince his children that they should follow his strict moral traditions. He can’t quite understand why his family and public life isn’t falling into place like tradition dictates it should. —IMDb

Director

Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on February 11, 1909, Joseph Leo Mankiewicz first worked for the movies as a translator of intertitles, employed by Paramount in Berlin, the UFA’s American distributor at the time (1928). He became a dialoguist, then a screenwriter on numerous Paramount productions in Hollywood, most of them Jack Oakie vehicles. Still in his 20s, he produced first-class MGM films, including The Philadelphia Story (1940). Having left Metro after a dispute with studio chief Louis B. Mayer over Judy Garland, he then worked for Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century-Fox, producing The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), when Ernst Lubitsch’s illness first brought him to the director’s chair for Dragonwyck (1946). Mankiewicz directed 20 films in a 26-year period, successfully attempted every kind of movie from Shakespeare adaptation to western, from urban sociological drama to musical, from epic film with thousands of extras to a two-character picture. A Letter to Three Wives (1949… read more